Venus to Cross Sun During 2012, Too

by Milky Way Maid

The year 2012 is not only the culmination of the Mayan calendar's Long Count, it is not only marked by the Neptune-Pluto square (discussed in a previous entry on this column), it is also the year that Venus makes another trip across the Sun. AND we will also see a solar eclipse within weeks of that Venus transit, one that aligns with the Pleiades star cluster in the sign Taurus.

The ancient Mayans (not to mention astrologer Barbara Hand Clow) believe that the Pleiades was a gateway for the ancients to come to earth or conversely, for shamans of several cultures to expand their minds.

Venus does not cross the Sun but rarely. She makes her visits in pairs, spaced eight years apart. But these paired visits may occur 105-130 years apart. So we are rather privileged to be able to view her transits in this decade with all the high-power telescopes trained on her progress across the Sun.

Venus made a transit of the Sun in June 8, 2004, at 17 degrees Gemini. Venus will make her return trip on June 6, 2012 at 15 degrees Gemini. Astrologer Susan Custer interprets the Gemini transits as presaging advances in communications and shrinking the 'global village.' For example, the 1631 and 1639 transit was the year that mail service was first instituted, in Denmark and Sweden. In 1874, the Atlantic telegraph cable was completed. Magellan sailed around the globe during the Venus transits in the 1600s. You may read her article on the topic on her website, The Astrology Page dot com, at http://www.theastrologypage.com/Archives/transit_of_venus.htm

The Mayans revered Venus, some might say they feared her even more. But they built temples and other observatories aligned to key phases in her cycle. Kukulkan was deemed a manifestation of Venus. Kukulkan, according to some, symbolized the return of the Christ energy, a time to rebalance the spiritual and material values we hold.

Some transits of Venus have been accompanied by the most dreadful events. The 2004 transit marked the year of the gigantic tsunami that killed 275,000 people. Yet this event triggered a spontaneous outpouring of concern and donations for the relief of the survivors rendered homeless and jobless. A previous transit marked the year that the Spanish conquistadores subjugated Mexico.

The fact that this second leg of the series occurs in Gemini may hold out some hope that we may see an advance in communications or internet capability, similar to the Sagittarius transits in the 1600s.

Let's look at what else happened in 2004 for more clues. On Jan. 4, 2004, Spirit, a NASA Mars Rover, lands on that planet. (It ceased communicating all too soon but was fixed remotely and resumed its chatter on Feb. 6.) The Queen Mary 2 is christened on Jan. 8. (She embarks on her first Trans-Atlantic crossing on April 16.)

On Feb. 12, the city of San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples who wished to wed. Massachusetts legalizes same-sex marriage on May 17.
On March 15, the discovery of the farthest natural object in the solar system (so far) was announced with the naming of Sedna. On March 29, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO.

On April 1, Google introduced gmail.

On May 24, North Korea bans mobile phones. On May 26, the New York Times publishes a list of its journalistic failings, including flawed reporting about the buildup to the 2003 launch of the war in Iraq.

On June 11, the probe Cassini-Huygens makes its closest flyby of Phoebe.
On June 21 and Sept. 29, the first privately funded space plane achieves space flight, SpaceShipOne. On June 24, New York state declares capital punishment to be unconstitutional.
On Dec. 8, the Cuzco Declaration is signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations. On Dec. 25, Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.
(Events listed above are from the HistoryOrb.com webpages.)

So we can see that 2004 was not just about gloom and doom and disaster, although some terrible hurricanes, earthquakes, and of course the Dec. 26 tsunami occurred. The year was also marked by private space travel, solar system discoveries and exploration, gmail, gay marriage rights, and the expansion of international working groups (NATO, the South American Community of Nations).

In 2012, we may see more ordinary people embark on space flights, the scientific conclusions of some of the 2004 landings may be released, gay marriage may once again go forward, and greater international cooperation.

Let us hope so, anyway.
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RE the solar eclipse of 2012, let me look in the ephemeris... NASA shows an Annular Solar Eclipse on May 20 – actually May 21 in Asia. Its path skirts the edges of the East China Sea, Japan, the Aleutian Islands, then to California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Texas. It is at zero degrees Gemini, reinforcing the Venus transit later in the same sign. BTW there is a conjunction of Saturn with the star Spica on May 11, the second of a series of contacts between them.

A chart cast for Washington D.C. on May 20, at 7 pm shows Mars high and conjunct the MC at 10 degrees Virgo. The Ascendant is 27 degrees Scorpio. Venus is setting and the Sun and Moon are just above the horizon in the West. Jupiter and Mercury are just below the horizon. Pluto is in the second house, Neptune in the third near the IC, Uranus in the fourth, Saturn in the eleventh. The MC and Mars trine Pluto. Venus is trine Saturn. Mercury is semisquare Uranus. Jupiter is sesquiquadrate Pluto.


NASA reference page on 2004 and 2012 Transits of Venus: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/transit/venus0412.html

NASA world map showing where we may view some or all of Venus' 2012 transit across the Sun: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/transit/venus/Map2012-1.GIF

NASA map of May 2012 track of Annular Solar Eclipse, http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2012May20Agoogle.html

My prior article on the Neptune-Pluto square in 2011 and 2012 is at: http://milkywayastrology.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/return-to-the-summer-of-love-the-uranus-pluto-square/

Getting graphic helps financial astrologers see the larger economic patterns

by Milky Way Maid

While I do not specialize in financial astrology, I do like to look at the overall big picture indicators of an up or down market. I finally pulled out the graphic charts I had made for 2007 and 2008, and was excited to see that some major celestial events correlated to a downturn in the economy. I was more surprised to see that the recession may have started as far back as September 2007.

First, take a look at the graphic chart for 2007. You see that the transit lines for Venus, Mercury, Sun and Saturn all cross about mid-August 2007; they are at 26-29 degrees Leo; note also that Venus is retrograde at this point, and did not go direct till Sept. 8 at 16 degrees Leo. Also the Sun, Mercury, Jupiter and Pluto crossed lines about Dec. 11, 2007, at 28-29 degrees Sagittarius.

Bear with me a bit longer as we take a look at the 2008 graphic chart. It is not very unusual when Sun, Mercury and Venus cross paths, as they do June 7-8, 2008. Mars and Saturn cross in July, and then Saturn, Venus and Mercury in mid-August. The most significant event was of course in mid-September, when the stock market crashed. What astrological event happened then? Mars crashed the Venus-Mercury party with the bad news from Saturn.

Later in the year, Sun-Mercury and Mars converged at the end of November, around Thanksgiving and what should have been the kickoff for another holiday shopping season. There was no joy in Vendorville, with only Wal-Mart and Amazon claiming successful holiday sales reports.

Sharp convergences like these produce definite effects in economic indicators such as the stock market. Whether they mark highs or lows in the market depends on other factors. One factor is whether Venus is 'ahead of' or 'behind' the Sun. Venus is ahead of the Sun when moving from the Inferior Conjunction to the Superior Conjunction. Venus is behind the Sun when moving from the Superior to the Inferior Conjunction. Another factor is crossing the nodes of the Moon. This is a subject for another article, tho.

Let's go back to basic rulerships. In economics, the Sun is the vitality of the economy, gold, and a standard of value.

Mercury is traders and speculators, those who move quickly in and out of the market – and also the data that traders crunch to find opportunities. Mercury is paper money, transportation and some machinery.

Venus is investors, those who prefer to buy and hold, those who look for good value and a fair exchange. Venus also rules sugar, copper, cattle, art, jewelry, and the dollar.

Mars is debt, loans, fees and taxes. Mars represents anyone who takes a cut of your transaction: the broker, the person whose table space you rented, the loan officer, the IRS, the bank that charges interest on your loan, the credit card company that charges interest on your balance, and interest rates themselves. Mars is also the pure speculator who shorts stocks, buys distressed merchandise at auction and in general profits on the hard luck of others. He drives the hard bargain and wants something thrown in for free “just to get rid of it”. Mars also rules metals like iron and steel.

So when Mars joined up with the main trading planets in September, 2008, especially after the negative prior conjunction with so-villain Saturn, the stock market finally decided there was heck to pay for the mortgage fiasco, a fiasco that had been brewing for a couple years but which was ignored or minimized or bundled and resold till nothing more could be done.

I kept hearing from others that their mutual funds were down in their January 2008 reports. So finally I started checking around to see if there were any indicators of trouble sometime in the fall of 2007. I found a couple items.

First, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released a report dated Feb. 28, 2008 on the fourth quarter of 2007. (You can read this article at www.BEA.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2008/gdp407p.htm). It said:

The deceleration in real GDP growth in the fourth quarter primarily reflected a downturn in inventory investment and decelerations in exports, in PCE, and in federal government spending that were partly offset by a downturn in imports.
Final sales of computers contributed 0.16 percentage point to the fourth-quarter growth in real GDP after contributing 0.28 percentage point to the third-quarter growth. Motor vehicle output subtracted 0.85 percentage point from the fourth-quarter growth in real GDP after contributing 0.36 percentage point to the third-quarter growth.

Then, Peter G. Miller wrote an article for FHAloanPros.com in April 2008 in which he states: “According to the latest data available from Standard and Poors/Case-Shiller, home prices fell 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 and were down 8.9 percent from a year earlier — the largest declines in the 20-year history of that series.”

An article on Money Morning website dates March 27, 2008, “Fourth Quarter GDP Unrevised; Flat First Quarter Expected” includes this quote: '"The credit crunch and rising inflation teamed to put the economy flat on its back in the final three months of 2007," IDEAglobal economist Joseph Brusuelas told Thomson Financial News.'

And lastly, astrologer Randall Ashbourne wrote an item titled, A Dow Theory Bear Signal (sorry I lost the exact date but sometime in the fall of 2007). In that piece he points out a bear sell signal of new lower lows in both the Dow Industrials and in the Dow Transports. In other words there was a dissonance between the amount of goods being produced and the amount of goods being transported (delivered) to retail outlets. In his words: “And again the logic is simple … the trains and trucks aren’t moving as much stuff as the factories are apparently still producing.”
So all these indicators – Dow industrials and transports, home prices, computer sales, slowing exports, all were giving us bad news by the end of 2007.

We could talk all day about technical analysis and the fine points of all these sector indicators. But the main point of this article is that the turns in the market were being signaled by the patterns in the sky made by the transiting trading planets – Sun, Venus, Mercury, (plus Mars). These patterns are what financial astrologer Barbara Koval called “the Serpent in the Sky” -- the graph of the above planets as they travel through the signs.

Hold on to this article because I will refer back to it in future articles. You might want to bookmark it or print it out so you can look at the graphic charts – or try running some graphic charts of your own.

PS -- Graphic charts can generated using the Solar Fire software. NOT selling anything, I just forgot to mention this when I posted the article.

SOURCES of Financial Data/Reports:
Fourth Quarter Report, BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) report, BEA.gov, released Feb. 28, 2008, www.BEA.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2008/gdp407p.htm

Miller, Peter G., “Housing Downturn: Is The End In Sight?,” FHA Loan Pros, April 17, 2008, http://www.fhaloanpros.com/2008/04/housing-downturn-is-the-end-in-sight/

Sweney, Mark, “Ad budgets cut amid fears of downturn, says Bellwether Report,” Guardian, Jan. 14, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/14/advertising.marketingandpr

Yousfi, Jennifer, “Fourth Quarter GDP Unrevised; Flat First Quarter Expected,” Money Morning, March 27, 2008, http://www.moneymorning.com/2008/03/27/fourth-quarter-gdp-unrevised-flat-first-quarter-expected/